The Rose Ransom (Girls Wearing Black: Book Three)

by Baum, Spencer

  “Oh, and there he goes!” Lena said, noting that Frankie was running up the hill again.

  “Does the boy never get tired?” said Peter. “I am shocked at his stamina. What did you do to him, Renata?”

  “I’ll never tell,” Renata said with a grin.

  “We must come back next year,” said Steffy. “I want a rematch. This was too much fun.”

  “Aren’t you going to go get him, Renata?” Lena said, pointing at Frankie, who was almost at the top of the hill. “What’s the command that brings him back to normal?”

  “It’s just his name,” Renata said. “Spoken with my voice.”

  “Don’t say it yet,” said Steffy. “He’s so good and this has been so much fun—let’s race to catch him.”

  “Oh, that sounds fabulous,” Mark said. “Catch him and carry him back to the gate. First one to get him back into the property wins.”

  “Be gentle, you guys,” Renata said. “I need Frankie in full working order to help clean up after this party.”

  “We’ll be careful, we promise,” said Steffy. “Everybody ready? On your marks…get set…”

  *****

  Renata’s crypt was a horrifying place. Stone floors, stone walls, and a stone ceiling—it had all the ambiance of a tomb. Against one wall sat a computer desk. Against another, a coffin. In between was wire shelving that held two skulls and ten jars. Jill aimed the flashlight at one of the jars and shrieked at what she saw inside.

  Easy, Jill, she told herself. No worse than what you saw in Merv Tremblay’s room of perversions. You’re here to do a job. Just do it.

  There was a small desk in the corner. Renata’s phone was sitting on it, hooked up to a laptop, ready for Jill to hack. She went to the computer and sat down. Her heart was racing. Her hands were shaking.

  You’ve done a hack like this dozens of times before, she told herself. This one is no different than the others.

  *****

  “Yes, Daddy,” Kim said. “Shannon Evans.”

  “Are you certain?”

  Was she certain? God, her daddy could be so dense sometimes. Kim wanted to hold the phone away from her ear and scream at the top of her lungs, YES, I’M CERTAIN YOU ASSHOLE!

  Keeping her cool, Kim said, “She mentioned Shannon by name.”

  “Who? Who are we talking about?”

  “Annika Fleming! She and Jill were talking. Have you not listened to a word I’ve been saying? Annika talked about getting a room for Shannon at some hotel in Rio. The Praya Desol or something.”

  “Praia de Sol,” her daddy said. “On Ipanema beach. Lovely hotel.”

  “Gee, thanks for the review. I’ll be sure to stay there next time I go. DO YOU HAVE ANY CLUE WHAT THIS MEANS?”

  “Easy there. You don’t need to yell.”

  “Shannon Evans is alive, Daddy!”

  “Did they mention her last name? Maybe it’s another Shannon.”

  “It’s not another Shannon.”

  “But you have to be certain. If we take this to the immortals, they’ll want to have a look in your mind.”

  “We’re not taking this to the immortals! Are you out of your gourd you stupid old man! We’re holding this over Annika’s head.”

  “Annika Fleming? What on earth could she have that we want?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s was a text message from Annika that started this whole mess! It’s Annika’s friends who are propping up Nicky Bloom. It’s the way they do whatever the fuck she tells them to do. It’s like a cult and Annika’s the one pouring all the Kool-Aid. If she decides that I’m the Coronation candidate to support, then it’s game over for Nicky Bloom.”

  “And you think, with enough pressure, Annika would tell them to support you instead.”

  “I think she’d do anything we asked her to if she knew her life was at stake.”

  “I feel like we need more proof. Just because you overheard a conversation about a girl named Shannon--”

  “I’m telling you this is Shannon Evans we’re talking about! It makes so damned much sense. We should have known this from the beginning. Annika and Shannon were tight. Best friends ever. And then Shannon disappeared and Nicky got her spot.”

  “I heard from a very reliable source that Shannon disappeared because her father made Daciana angry.”

  “And a more reliable source is telling you right now that Shannon is alive and is a part of the giant shitball that is the Nicky Bloom campaign. If we expose them, Daciana will have their heads and I win by default!”

  “Is Daciana there tonight?”

  There was a bit of desperation in her daddy’s voice. It disgusted Kim. Her old man had always been in love with Daciana. Or at least, in love with the idea of her.

  “I haven’t seen her,” Kim said.

  “I wish you had. I haven’t heard from Daciana in a long time. I’m worried that she isn’t returning my calls.”

  Kim shook her head. Pathetic. For all his power in Washington, for all the fear he commanded in this town, in his heart, Galen Renwick was a needy, pathetic man.

  “It doesn’t matter if we have Daciana in our pocket or not,” Kim said. “All that matters is that Annika thinks we do. She and Jill and Nicky and Shannon are making a mockery of the Coronation contest! They’re deceiving the immortals! They know that if someone finds them out, they’re all dead!”

  “I still think we need more evidence.”

  “Well go and find me some, then! Jesus Christ, it’s like I have to do everything around here.”

  “We would need evidence that Shannon is still alive.”

  “Send someone to Rio de Janeiro. The Praia de Sol hotel. Shannon Evans is there. I guarantee it.”

  “And if we’re going to blackmail Annika, we would need evidence connecting her to Shannon.”

  “Annika and Shannon have been talking. Find out what they’re saying to each other.”

  “Okay. I’ll get after it. You better get back to your party.”

  *****

  Frankie ran down the hill, spreading his legs in long strides, allowing gravity to do the work. He heard movement in the trees, the vampires, whooping and hollering as they leapt among the branches behind him. He sensed a change in them. They weren’t observers anymore. They were coming for him. They were coming quickly.

  Shadows in the moonlight. Leaves and twigs on the forest floor. Tree trunks racing by on either side. Piercing screams from the vampires behind him.

  Battle cries.

  He saw the shadow before she landed. She flew through the air above his head and landed with her back to him.

  I must kill everyone before they kill me.

  There was no hesitation. No thought about what it meant to attack a vampire. He raised his hatchet and struck the woman while she was still turning around to face him. The blade of his hatchet landed between her shoulder and her neck.

  Had the blade not been so dulled already she would have lost her head on that first strike, but this hatchet had no sting left after Frankie smashed it against the lock on a steel gate.

  The vampire looked at him with horror in her eyes. Frankie yanked the hatchet free and blood began flooding from the wound. The vampire was weak and disoriented, but not dead.

  I must kill everyone before they kill me.

  He raised the hatchet for a second swing.

  “Frankie!”

  The sound of his master’s voice, calling his name, pulled him under. The real Frankie, who had been so occupied with the task at hand he never got to enjoy his freedom, got sucked back into the vortex. Frankie the slave was back.

  Renata landed right next to him.

  “Frankie, no!” she said. “Stop!”

  “Yes, Master.”

  He was an observer again, trapped somewhere behind the eyes that now looked at the vampire he had nearly killed.

  Lena was her name. Frankie the slave knew all their names and faces. Lena Trang.

  She was kneeling on the forest floor, using her hands to
hold her head in place. Her wound was healing itself. Her strength was returning.

  “He’s mine!” she snarled. “I will rip him apart!”

  “Cool it, Lena!” Renata snapped. “It’s your own damned fault. I can’t believe you almost got killed by a human.”

  The others were laughing. It was funny to them that Lena almost died. One of them put his hand on Frankie’s shoulder, declared him to be an amazing piece of meat.

  “And almost ripe,” said Renata.

  “What a treat he will be,” said Mark Spinoza. “I dare say I’m jealous he’s not in my pantry.”

  Renata looked at Frankie and smiled. “Yes, Frankie is a very special boy. The sort you don’t eat unless it’s a special occasion. Okay you clowns, I won the scrum. Where’s Bernadette? I want to talk about my prize money.”

  *****

  Jill had worked her way past the login, had disabled all the tracking software, and was creating a mirror of Renata’s phone on the laptop.

  It was taking a long time.

  “How big is this phone?” she whispered.

  She looked at the system stats. The phone had a 16 gig hard drive—hardly anything at all. The mirror should have been written in just a few minutes. Why was it taking so long?

  She looked at the processing speed on the laptop and the phone. Everything looked normal.

  “Odd,” she said. Perhaps there was some security clogging things up?

  She spent the next few minutes double checking everything about the hack. It all looked good. Not a thing was going wrong. It was just taking longer than she thought it should.

  Blowing it off as something to do with the phone, something she didn’t understand yet but would once she had complete access, she slouched back in the chair. Nothing to do now but wait.

  Her eyes drifted to a strange black and white picture hanging on the wall next to the desk. A young Renata Sullivan, twelve or thirteen years old, standing onstage, holding a skull in her hand.

  It was Renata’s love of performance that drove the theatrics of the Coronation contest. A dance where everyone came in costume, a stage erected in the woods where boys beat each other to a pulp, an auction at a theater downtown where the girls wearing black were sold to the highest bidder…

  And tonight, a play. The Rose Ransom performance would begin in just a few minutes. Jill could explain away her absence from the party. But come the performance, where everyone had an assigned seat at a table--if she wasn’t back upstairs by the time the play started she was in trouble.

  Higher on the wall, above the picture of Renata, hung a tapestry with two sentences embroidered into the fabric.

  Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,

  Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

  The door opened, startling her and making her jump up from the desk.

  “Jill, it’s me,” came Tarin’s voice.

  “Tarin you nearly scared me to death!”

  Tarin rushed down the stairs. “Are you done?” he said. “It’s time.”

  “I’m in and everything is working, but it’s going slow. I need a few more minutes.”

  “We don’t have a few more minutes. I have to be back at my post.”

  “If I stop the hack now we have nothing,” said Jill. “If I get a few more minutes, we’ll have full remote access to Renata’s phone.”

  Tarin stood on the bottom step for a second. The crypt was illuminated only by Jill’s flashlight and the glow of the screens, but somehow the light fell on Tarin in a way that he was crystal clear.

  He was an exceptionally good-looking guy.

  “Here’s what we’ll do,” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a keyring. “Take this.”

  “Renata’s keys? Oh, I don’t--”

  “It’s the only way. You take the keys. You stay down here and finish the hack. When you’re done, leave everything where it is. Lock the door behind you and get back to the party. I’ll get another set of keys from the barracks and come down here later to clean up.”

  “I don’t like this plan, Tarin. I don’t even know if I can find my way back through all those halls. And the security camera?”

  “You can do this, Jill. I have faith in you. Have a little faith in yourself.”

  “I have plenty of faith in myself! But you’re talking about leaving me alone in the crypt of Renata’s mansion!”

  Tarin placed the keys on the computer desk.

  “You can do this,” he said.

  “Tarin, wait. Can’t you give it just a few more minutes?”

  He was already running back up the stairs.

  “I have to get back, Jill. Renata will notice if I’m gone.”

  Before she could utter another word of protest, Tarin was at the top of the stairs, closing the door behind him.

  Chapter 23

  The hack finished running not more than five minutes after Tarin left.

  “Crazy loon,” Jill muttered. “Couldn’t wait even a few minutes to help me get out of here.”

  She grabbed the keys and went up the stairs. She stopped at the door and listened for movement on the other side. It was quiet, so she opened it. The room outside was empty. Jill closed the door behind her and locked it using the keys Tarin left for her. With no pocket on her outfit for keys, and her handbag checked at the front door of the mansion, she had no choice but to hold them as she ran. She ran with only a vague memory of which way to go, but a sense that if she had faith in herself, she could pull if off. Up the huge staircase, into the maze of long hallways, down one to the left, and to the left again. The chandeliers, the suit of armor, the glass case with treasures from antiquity—she recognized every space she passed through, and she even remembered where to look for security cameras. She was doing it. It was an incredible, exhilarating feeling. She was making all the right moves at the right times. She was about to enter the art gallery when the sound of footsteps stopped her in her tracks.

  There were two pairs of feet. One with hard soles that clomped across the floor. The other a pair of high heels moving with a light touch.

  Both were coming her way.

  Jill backed into the nearest room off the hallway, finding herself in a museum of sorts. Pedestals rose from the floor, a dress inside a glass case on top of each one. The dresses were extravagant and varied. Some were big Victorian Era gowns with giant hoops and tight bodices. Others were more contemporary, hanging on slim mannequins inside their glass cases.

  Every dress had a big blood stain on the front, as if the poor soul who was wearing it got stabbed in the stomach. And now she saw a bloody knife lying on the pedestal underneath each dress. Glass cases with bloody dresses and bloody knives--Jill felt like she had stumbled into a museum of murder evidence.

  “No, I’m headed to my dressing room now,” came a voice from the hall. It was Renata. One of the people she heard in the hallway was Renata!

  Frantically looking for a place to hide, Jill backed into one of the pedestals and the glass case on top began to tip.

  “Yes, I’m scheduled to do the performance in just a few minutes,” Renata said. The voice was louder. She was getting closer.

  Jill caught the tipping glass case before it fell over. She pressed it back into place, then she bolted for a door on the far wall. She opened it to find a small closet. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

  Seconds later, Renata came into the room.

  “I’ve spoken with several of the students,” she said. “None of them know a thing.”

  A thing about what? Who was Renata talking to?

  “Sergio is the only one I’m worried about,” she said. She must be on the phone, Jill thought. But who came in with her?

  “Yes, he’s here tonight. I’m surprised too. He never comes. What was that? The students? Oh no. I have ways of getting the students to play nice for me. Have I ever told you about the Rose Ransom performance I put on for these kids?” Then, more quietly, Renata said, “Frankie, my shoes
are in that closet over there. Go get them for me.”

  The second pair of footsteps. Renata hadn’t come in here alone, and now someone was walking to the closet where Jill was hiding. She pressed her back into the corner and held her breath.

  “It really has been my greatest contribution to the clan,” Renata continued. “In its way, my little play is just as important as Coronation itself. Not that Daciana ever recognized that.”

  A hand on the closet door. The doorknob started to turn.

  “Yes, you’ve got it,” Renata said. “It’s much more than a simple play. For these students, it’s everything. One of the great moments of their young lives.”

  The door opened. Light came flooding into the room. Jill stood perfectly still in the back corner.

  The big, burly servant, the same one who ran into Jill at the party and forced her to have a dumpling, stuck his head inside, and started scanning the floor. He was looking for shoes. Outside, Renata continued talking. With the closet door open, her voice was much louder in Jill’s ears.

  “I’m on stage in two minutes. Call you later.”

  As Renata snapped her phone shut, the servant snatched up a pair of shoes on the floor of the closet. He was standing up, about to leave, when his eyes fell on a second pair of shoes, and the feet inside them.

  He was looking right at Jill now. With her eyes, she begged him not to say anything.

  They were locked in place for two very long seconds, the servant staring at Jill; Jill staring back. Then he backed away and closed the closet door behind him.

  “Here you are, Miss,” he said.

  “Oh you found them,” said Renata. “My lucky shoes. I’ve worn these for every Rose Ransom performance since the very beginning. Can you believe that, Frankie?”

  “I believe everything you tell me, Master.”

  “Of course you do. Zip me up in the back. This dress is a beast.”

  Jill heard the sound of a zipper, then two pairs of feet walking away from the room. She stood perfectly still, her back still pressed into the corner of the closet.